here was so much hype surrounding Diablo III that it was set up to fail from day 1, with inflated expectations, insane player demand, and yes, a horrible misstep on the part of Blizzard, with their always-online DRM. This expansion pack, Reaper of Souls (RoS), to people who have chosen to stop playing vanilla Diablo III or have decided to never give it the time of day, may seem just like another belated apology in a series of apologies that have all been too little, too late.
Seeing as I am one of the lucky few who decided to get on board with the superior console versions of the game, I don’t feel that way about it at all.
But like any gamer who can’t give up playing their favorite game, we want to convince ourselves that there are some very important life lessons we can learn from hacking and slashing our way through the minions of Hell. Important life lessons about dating, even, such as…
8. Absence Makes the Heart Grow Fonder
I realize that when you initially date someone, you can’t help but want to see them all the time. That’s perfectly normal and understandable, but there is such a thing as overdoing it. At that point, it’s the perfect point to maybe exchange sweet nothings over the phone, or, as they say in the vernacular, “magpa-miss ka naman paminsan-minsan (‘pag may time).”
A lot of the Diablo faithful practiced this in anticipation of Reaper of Souls, actually. They just stopped playing the game for a while, eager to revisit it and perhaps try out the brand-spanking new class available in the game, the Crusader. By the time they start playing the game again after a bit of a layoff, you can be sure that they will take to it with much more gusto than if they just seamlessly transitioned from vanilla Diablo III to Diablo III: RoS.
Now, imagine that much gusto rushing right into your dating life. That’s the power of absence, in the right doses.
7. Buuut Out Of Sight, Out Of Mind
When dating someone, there is a fine line to tread between simply being apart, and drifting apart.
6. Persistence Is The Key
See? If you’re persistent, at some point, you really do get what you want!
5. Subtlety Is For The Weak
Ooog! Me want! Me no understand “play coy.”
Look: if you want to date someone, say so. Don’t try to couch it under the guise of “oh, let’s just hang out.” All these mind games don’t help anyone, and just make the both of you look positively silly. You don’t need to be a complete boor, but don’t expect the one you want to be psychic, either.
The Nephalem won’t beat the Reaper of Souls with subtlety. Try the sharp edge of a broadsword, instead.
4. Ambiance Is Key
I knew I shoulda turned left at Albaquerque!
Making a date romantic involves setting the mood properly. Even the swankiest restaurant, if bereft of ambiance, could turn out tacky and completely pointless.
When Diablo III was in development, people complained that it was “too colourful.” It didn’t take too long before Blizzard managed to rectify that, although they couldn’t help but take some jabs at the people who were complaining by including a secret Unicorn stage in the game.
3. Never Put All Your Eggs In One Basket
More like, century eggs, amirite?
Except for teasing further sequels in the Diablo franchise, why do they insist on putting all the evil demons in the world in one Black Soulstone, and then hope against hope that nobody would find where it’s hidden and unleash the evil upon all of creation yet another time?
It’s easy to say we should go all-in and there should be no turning back when we go for someone we love. That’s sweet and romantic and all, but when the betrayal comes, where does that leave you? You want to leave something of yourself, because when you lose all of you in love, who is that shambling shell standing there that says “I love you?” What is this “I” you speak of, if there’s nothing left in you?
2. While the Best Things In Life are Worth the Wait, Life Itself Never Waits
Finally! After 2,000 years…
With all the grinding we’ve done playing the earlier version of Diablo III, it’s easy to see that this highly-anticipated expansion will change a lot for gamers, most notably through the implementation of Loot 2.0, which anyone with the original Diablo III can get now in a patch, making the items you get more beneficial to you and your specific character class.
True, the best items in the game were always worth the wait-but so is the expansion itself, much in the same way that Diablo II: Lord of Destruction was a worthy expansion pack for the original Diablo II as well.
In dating, there’s also a reason why we have standards, and these standards intrinsically mean that who we want don’t always get to us as soon as we would hope for them to. That doesn’t mean lowering our standards and settling for mediocrity should always be our first response.
And yet, while the so-called best isn’t here yet, who’s to keep you from playing Vanilla Diablo III, if you still can’t get a copy of Reaper of Souls? Life goes on, and you will keep on hacking and slashing away until you level up in this game called life, and it’s the same in love: waiting for the best that may or may never come should never entail putting your entire life on hold for that person.
1. Log Off Sometime
Three words: Shut. It. Off.
Look. It doesn’t matter if LadyHackSlash69 and you have an amazing connection with each other every time you go on Legendary runs in Act IV again and again. I don’t care if she laughs at every single Diablo-related pun you throw at her, and you totally think she’s into you the way she keeps healing you with her Monk. At some point, you need to stop playing Diablo III, and actually date someone if you really want the dating lessons you learn from Diablo III to mean jack. Otherwise, what was the point, right?
Got dating lessons from Diablo? Or, you know, just dating lessons in general? Post them now in the Comments Section.
